Global Domination

Sunday, January 21

There's No Cure Like Travel

Trust me to title an entry to this blog with a musicals reference. In this case I'm trying to make an allusion to a Cole Porter song from the musical Anything Goes. Anyway, I'd have to say that, while this weekend's trip up north has given me some restoration, both spiritually, and in terms of reuniting me with possessions previously left behind, the similarity with Anything Goes runs skin deep, about as far as the title of this entry. It turns out that I do have my own sense of judgment about what is right and wrong, and what I would be prepared to do. I was deeply unhappy, for instance, to be a passenger of a drunk driver after this evening's meal, so I spoke up. As a result, four of up chose to take a taxi, rather than be passengers and tacitly condone this sort of thing. Some things just don't go. My entire life has not come this far to be risked in a drunk driving incident. Having said that, I was prepared to drive from Newcastle to Leeds in high winds at high speeds, despite the fact that this is sub optimal behaviour. I suppose that I was, at least, sober.

I'm writing this on my soon to be redundant mobile phone. The new one is waiting in the wings to take over. Actually, it's in the car, but there's nothing wrong with using a metaphor. As this message comes via the gift of predictive text, I was amused to find that 'sober' and 'roads' are keyed with the same keys in predictive text. This is definitely the same thing as the fact that 'pint' leads to 'riot' via 'shot'.

The house visit in Newcastle was, overall, pretty positive. Though I've identified various things that need sorting, some of which I drove to B&Q then and there to buy materials for, the overall condition was much better than I expected, or indeed kept the house in. The new vacuum cleaner was fine, and my car is now packed with a lot of crap that I think will prove very useful. So it's not crap or, as my phone likes to suggest, 'bras'.

Drunken drivers aside (or 'cried'), the opportunity to catch up with some old Leeds friends has been a good one. Some good food has been consumed, and a small amount of ale, though only tonight when I wasn't designated as driver, my bras-filled car inappropriately lacking seat space.